Firm trying to buy .org registry promises capped prices for nonprofits

The private equity firm aiming to buy control of .org internet domains has promised to cap price increases and create an advisory board after nonprofits raised concerns about increased prices and possible censorship, the Associated Press reports. 

Ethos Capital offered more than $1 billion late last year to buy Public Interest Registry, which currently manages the .org registry often used by nonprofits. The possible sale has drawn backlash from such organizations, which have been especially fearful that prices would go up. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees domain names, already removed a cap that limited price increases to 10% last year. Ethos Capital promised to maintain a 10% limit for the next eight years on Friday.

Nonprofits have also been concerned that the for-profit firm would allow censorship of sites or institutions critical of certain businesses or governments and the sale of data from those browsing the sites. Ethos Capital has responded by offering to create an advisory group, which it calls the “stewardship council,” and which could veto proposals to change policies related to censorship, freedom of expression, and data usage. But the promise has yet to assuage all the concerns organizations have raised. 

“The handpicked ‘stewardship council’ will have no real authority or practical ability to override the wishes of PIR’s new private equity owners,” Mitch Stoltz, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told The Verge. “And based on what we know about the financial structure of this deal and the practices of many private equity fund managers, the sale risks bankrupting (the Public Interest Registry), leaving millions of nonprofit and other non-commercial website owners in the lurch.”